Cruise Missile
|image1 = Cruise missile.gif |image2 = |group = Corvette |role = Kamikaze Ship |type = |cost = 250 |mass = 490 |length = |acceleration = 700 |speed = 630 |drive = |armament = Beast Bio-Warhead |eras = Cataclysm Era |affiliation = Taiidan Imperialist Faction,The Beast }} The Cruise Missile is a one-shot missile employed by the Beast and the Taiidan Imperialist Faction. They were designed to subvert ships. Background The Taiidan Empire had fallen in the wake of the Homeworld War and was crippled. What was once the great Empire was now a conglomeration of republics and kingdoms. The Taiidan themselves are divided into two camps: the Taiidan Republic, and the Taiidan Imperialists. The Imperialists shared a loose alliance with one another: an alliance governed by the strongest of the remaining Taiidan lords. They lusted for the reconstruction of the Empire and the recapture of Hiigara. But they had no chance without a new ally. The Beast, a nanotech entity capable of subverting biological and technological systems, had been unleashed by the unwitting Kiith Somtaaw. Soon Imperialist scientists discovered the Beast as the Beast attacked its ships and those of their ally, the Turanic Raiders. Nevertheless, the Imperialists were unfazed and saw the Beast as a possible weapon. On the world of Gozan IV, they tried to develop a Beast sample into an effective bioweapon. The Taiidan, using an unmarked drone craft, first used the Beast cruise missile in the Seera Tel system to ambush a squadron of four Manaani frigates. Kiith Manaan sent a carrier group to investigate the attack. The carrier group found the wreckage of one frigate and no clue of the rest, which were Ion Cannon Frigates. Kiith Manaan later found an escape pod and found aboard a delirious bridge officer of the wrecked frigate. A psi-tech team helped her regain her memory and she retold what happened: The drones flew too fast to be avoided and collided with the three Firelances. Suddenly, the three ships fired upon the fourth ship and destroyed it. Later evidence revealed this was indeed the Beast Cruise Missile and that the "drones" had been carrying a plasma warhead much like those used in regular missiles, mines, or Plasma Bombs. In addition the warhead, which pierced the hull, carried a massive sample of the Beast which then unleashed itself upon the frigates, spreading throughout the hulls within seconds and disintegrating the crew into nothing more than half-living, half-dead circuitry. Unfortunately for the Imperialists, the program went haywire and they were unable to contain the infection effectively as to be able to board the victimized ship after the initial Beast attack. As such, the project was effectively abandoned by the time the Kuun-Lan arrived to stop the program. Even so, early attempts at containing the virus eventually became the predecessor to the energy feedback effect that the Siege Cannon used to sterilize the Clee-San to lure the Beast Mothership. Sometime during all this the Beast managed to get a hold of the weapons being used by the Taiidan. Beast cruise missiles flying Beast colours attacked a Republic convoy fleeing from a nova. While these could have been Imperialist weapons as the Republic supposed, it seems more likely (though unproven) that the Beast managed to get a hold of the Imperialist weapon. It is even possible that by this time the Imperialists had entered into an alliance with the Beast, an attempt to gain an ally strong enough to knock out the Kushan and help restore the old Empire. It was from here that the Beast cruise missile became definable as a Beast weapon, not a Taiidan one. Appearances * Sources *Homeworld: Cataclysm Manual *Homeworld Shipyards Category:Cataclysm: Ships